If – in a year – your Italian is no better, it won’t be on me!

No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

+++

Buondì.

Gotta keep this super-quick today, as I have an appointment to take my elderly motorbike for its ‘revisione’.

At thirty-years plus of age, I no longer have to pay road tax on her (though there’s an annual fee to pay to be exempt) but these biennial visits to the mechanic are unavoidable.

With most of the afternoon gone – and caring for Bug takes up evenings, nights and weekends – there’s not much time left over for digression.

Talking of which, I notice that the club mailing list (i.e. people who have chosen to receive emailed articles like this one) has grown to scary proportions!

Worse, it’ll cost me an extra hundred dollars a month from the next billing cycle if I don’t do anything to slim it down.

So if – right now – you’re thinking your own version of “what is this crap and how could it possibly help me learn Italian”, scroll on down to the bottom of the page and click the ‘unsubscribe’ link.

Maybe buy an ebook on the way out, or subscribe to EasyItalianNews.com (see the P.S. – your Italian will thank you) but that’s us done. “Ciao ciao”, or as we say to Bug when someone is leaving, “Saluta con la manina!”

OK, anyway, I was going to tell you that an old friend of ours called during the summer. She’s an Italian teacher, which means boring teenagers with literature and confounding them with stupid grammar rules that don’t apply in inner cities.

Club members who’ve been around for a while will have heard me rant about teachers before – though I’m a one myself (private sector though, so different).

Stefi and I used to hang about with – let’s call them Maria and Mario – back when our now-adult kids were small. You know the way that when you have young children your only friends become the parents of their friends? That.

Lots of time has passed. Now they have a daughter in medical school, as do we. At a certain point we all fell out (likely it was my fault for being outspoken after too much alcohol), so when Maria called one stiffling summer evening to suggest they bring cold beer around to our place, it was a surprise, though not an unwelcome one.

They turned up, as agreed, with ample beer and a selection of snacks, settled themselves in armchairs in front of the fan, admired sweaty Bug, poured the beer, and we all caught up on pleasantries about our kids, as if nothing had changed.

At a certain point, Maria mentioned that she’d have to do an English exam in the fall. Simultaneously Mario pulled out his phone and started – I presume – dealing with work emails.

Ah hah! I thought. That’s the reason for the visit! She needs help with the exam.

OK, so back in the day, Mario was a respected and up-coming (though rather weird) young pyschiatrist, and Maria was looking for a job, not very hard. A college graduate, she’d been out of work for so long that no one expected her to ever have a career. And with family money, and two small kids, I don’t suppose she much wanted or needed one.

And then, suddenly, after the years we’d all spent bitching about the poor quality of Italian public schools – the fact that there was a strike every Friday, that union meetings were held in class time (and parents required to bring the kids later than usual), and so on – Maria’s phone rang and she found out that her number had finally come up. It was her turn.

To be a teacher!

As far as I was aware she’d shown no interest in either teaching or children, not least her own (could be me being very unkind here) but this was an Italian-style ‘job for life’, the sort of lucky break that no one would ever turn down.

Personally, I thought she’d be rubbish at it, but that evidently didn’t matter. Schools in Italy are run, not for the children, but for the staff. They have a ‘right’ to work, which trumps the kids’ right to be educated by people who actually give a shit.

No need for any training. Take the entrance exam, wait a couple of decades with your fingers crossed, and bang – the gods have smiled on you! Your class will be waiting for their new prof. on Monday at eight a.m. Don’t worry about lesson-planning. Borrow a book from a keen student in the front row, ask which page they were on with the last teacher, and begin from there.

Aside: Stefi’s cousin’s also a state-school Italian teacher, and she’s great! Loves kids, works hard, never misses class even when really sick… So they’re not all like I feared Maria would be.

Anyway, back to the present day. Mario’s on his phone, Maria needs help with her English exam. I must say, that surprised me, as she’s a well-educated, priviledged woman in her mid-fifties, and certainly shouldn’t need support for an exam that’s just a level or so harder than what average Italian teenagers are supposed to achieve by the age of nineteen.

Not to worry, I reassured her. Your English is fine, and ALL THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXAM IS AVAILABLE FOR FREE ON THE INTERNET.

So all you need to do is download the teachers’ pack, read through it (should take a couple of hours), download the sample papers and the answer sheets, do a few of those, check your answers, prioritise anything that you were weak at with extra practice, and Bob’s your uncle!

Easy peasy.

Remember I’m talking to a state-school teacher of older teenagers, who apparently needs this exam pass so that she can accompany school trips abroad, or teach English, or something.

Don’t much care, but I had no doubt that – using the exam’s teacher information pack – she could do this, do it quickly, and do it with minimum effort. Or I wouldn’t have suggested it.

She looked unconvinced, and worried where she would find the material. Google it, obviously! But that didn’t reassure her, so I did it myself, there and then, copied the download links, asked for her address, and emailed them to her.

Job done, I poured more beer and thought no more about it.

Late, late summer / early fall, really, Maria’s exam was ten days away, and a reply to that email popped into my inbox. Could I spare an hour to…? What exactly was the problem? No, but I just need to meet and…

So, surprised and not very pleased, I gave her a day and a time. Up she duly showed, and with an armful of printouts, the whole teachers’ pack, so hundreds of pages of detailed, incredibly-useful information on the exam, and on exactly what she had to do to maximise her pass mark.

Once again, I wanted to know what exactly the problem was. That’s to say, how could I – this small number of days before the actual exam – help?

In short, why was I wasting siesta time on her?

Nonsensical mumbling. The sort of reply you’d expect from an embarrassed teenager who was being called out for not doing her homework.

Which, it turns out, she hadn’t. She’d printed the notes, but not, apparently, bothered to look at them.

Trying not to scream in frustration (and mentally despairing at the quality of Italian state-school teachers), I took the pile of paper off her and showed her how to sort though it to find information about the various parts of the exam, and most vitally, the marking criteria.

Insomma, this is how you find out what exactly is going to be tested, how it will be tested, and what you have to do to get a good score.

The beginnings of understanding appeared to dawn on Maria’s face. She looked at me.

Could I spare three or four more hours before the exam next Wednesday to go through all this with her?

You do it, I told her. And then, if you still need help, email.

But focus on the things we discussed, practice the listening, do a few sample writing tasks, run through the ‘easy’ parts, just so you’re familiar with them.

Above all, don’t worry! You’ll be fine.

Weeks have passed and I’ve heard nothing more. Don’t expect to, really, as no one likes to be put in the position of feeling they’re incompetent, even if they are.

In my defence, that wasn’t my intention. I’d have taken the exact same approach with one of my daughters, or with one of her kids. Except they’d have responded differently.

After a lifetime in education, kids are used to being told what to do, then doing it. By late teenage years, you can mostly treat them like adults, show them the teachers’ packs, what’s in them, how useful it is, and leave them to get on with it.

Teachers, on the other hand…

What is it with them/us? Does Maria lack self-confidence? Has she never taught herself anything in her life?

Or could it just be she’s lazy?

For the thousands of people who were wondering what the point of all this is:

1.) other people, however well-educated and privileged, do not necessarily know more about how to do things than you do;

2.) you’re not necessarily any less capable of ‘teaching yourself’ than they are.

If you want to learn Italian but have no idea how, then you’ll have to learn!

Take a look at https://onlineitalianclub.com/how-to-learn-italian-or-any-language/. Make that a long look. A long, considered look. Study it.

And then?

Go learn.

And as you learn, or don’t learn, more likely, you’ll be learning how to learn.

And once you start learning how to learn (maybe through making lots of bad decisions…), you’ll be able to read the winds, correct your course, and begin to make headway.

Why bother with all that, if you could just get a teacher to make the decisions for you?

Because, little friend, teachers don’t know everything, even though they often pretend they do.

Even I don’t know everything, so it’s far, far better that you know enough about what’s happening to make your own decisions.

Teach yourself instead, or teach yourself as well.

Either is fine. It’s your choice.

Just don’t do nothing, don’t be passive, don’t shrug and wait for someone to show you the ‘right’ way.

If – a year from now – your Italian is no better, it won’t be on me.

Alla prossima settimana!

Ebook of the Week, ‘Il miracolo del paese’, £4.99

This week’s half-price eBook ‘easy reader’ offer is the C1 (advanced) level Il miracolo del paese, an original ebook that will keep you turning the pages and so improving your reading/listening comprehension skills, grammar, and vocabulary.

Italia, circa sette anni dopo la Prima Guerra Mondiale e la successiva influenza spagnola, che insieme avevano decimato la popolazione giovane e fertile di Villalba, un piccolo paese nel nord d’Italia

Fuori dalla casa di Luigia c’era un gruppetto di persone che si guardava in attesa. Il marito di Luigia, che stava per diventare padre, mostrava tutta la sua preoccupazione.

“Voi credete che sia normale? Tante ore per…”

Il parroco sbottò, quasi fosse offeso: “Certo che è normale, abbi fede nel Signore, che diamine! Le cose ben fatte son lunghe da farsi!”

Marcello chiese scusa, rammaricato per aver messo in dubbio i piani del buon Dio. Ma in quel momento qualcuno gridò: “È nato, è nato!”

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at upper-intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Remember, this week Il miracolo del paese is 50% discounted, so just £4.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!

Buy Il miracolo del paese just £4.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | History/historical Italian ebooks | Catalog

Find more ebooks, organised by level, then type: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2

How do I access my ebook?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

P.S.

And of course, don’t forget to read/listen to yesterday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as to improve your Italian reading and listening comprehension skills!

Visit their website to get started immediately!

Better still, subscribe (also FREE) and so get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be emailed to you.
+++

OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)